The Columbus, GA Community Arts and Music Collective: Preparations for the Long Haul Introduction In previous papers, the creation and planning of the Columbus, GA Arts and Music community initiative has been explored in depth. In this paper, the long-term existence of this project will be explored through the following areas: sustainability, maintaining gains achieved, approaches to support well-being, and acknowledging and celebrating gains and victories. While this… Read More
Planning a Community Arts and Music Collective in Columbus, GA Introduction Members of the Columbus, GA community continue to inform me that an arts and music collective is vitally needed. Yet, some of them continue to cite examples of independent music and arts businesses (independent from the mainstream cultural institutions in Columbus and the surrounding community) that have failed in the recent and distant past. … Read More
An Undeveloped Opportunity: Initiating a Community Arts and Music Collective in Columbus, GA Introduction Columbus, Georgia is a city of abundant opportunities for the future and a city with a profusion of missed opportunities in the past. While this is obviously the case with economic and career options, exploring the city also reveals few opportunities for artistic self-expression for anyone. There are occasions to view traveling artistic culture… Read More
A Critical Review of Hays’ Community activists’ perceptions of citizenship roles in an urban community Hays, R. A. (2007). Community activists’ perceptions of citizenship roles in an urban community: A case study of attitudes that affect community engagement. Journal of Urban Affairs, 29(4), 401-424 Introduction Allen Hays (Hays, 2007) looks at the connections and barriers between community activism (community-based organizations) and political participation in a small urban community to… Read More
Reflections on Qualitative Research Methods, the Qualitative Case Study and Reactions to Hays’ Community activists’ perceptions of citizenship roles in an urban community I am grateful for many experiences and environments in my life, including the ethnic influence of my father, that allowed me to experience different cultures and be open with others that were different from my bicultural identity. This influence, in many ways, brought me here to a place where I am curious about everything, with… Read More
Reflections on Rappaport’s The art of social change – Community narratives as resources for individual and collective identity Rappaport (1998) reinforces a previous written critique I had in another course. Researchers in community psychology as well as humanistic psychology are not there for themselves or to dictate a narrative, whether it is finding a means to evolve through a series of community problems or not. Rappaport explains it as being, “useful to people… Read More
Reflections on Jackson & Volckens’ Community stressors and racism and Minkler’s Introduction to community organizing and community building I appreciate the idea that we are studying a practical, on-the-ground-activist-map and an academic and analytical one. The readings of Minkler’s (2006) case studies and Jackson & Volckens (1998) illustrate this very well. While Jackson’s “reverberation theory of stress and racism” as it occurs in both the dominant political majority group and throughout the subgroup… Read More
Reflections On Hacker & Roberts’ Transformational leadership Chapters 7 and 8, Participatory Feminism, and Selected Writings on Feminism and Liberation Psychology I know there are” ideal” companies to work for, not because I have worked for them (because I haven’t), but because very few friends have mentioned their work environments and their ideal supervisors and because I have read about them occasionally in the news pages. But now that I have read Hacker and Robert’s analysis… Read More